November 7 – Harry Reid Ready to Dance but Fight for Filibuster Reform; The Coming Showdown over the “Fiscal Cliff”; Is the Religious Right on the Wane and Secular, Liberal America on the Rise?

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Part 1	We begin with the U.S. Senate where the Democrats increased their majority and Majority Leader Harry Reid pledged today that he will change the Senate rules, which he said have been abused. A long-time senior Senate staffer Ira Shapiro, joins us. He is the author of “The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis” and we examine how the filibuster can be reformed and how the newly re-elected president can fast track the huge backlog of judicial appointments that have been blocked by the Republican minority.
Part 2	Then we look at the House that remains in Republican hands, although some of the more incendiary Tea Party firebrands have lost their seats. Mike Lofgren, who spent 28 years working as a senior Republican staffer, the last 16 as a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget Committees, joins us. The author of “The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class got Shafted”, we discuss the coming showdown over the so-called “fiscal cliff” and next February’s raising of the debt ceiling.
Part 3	Then finally, with the election of a lesbian to the U.S. Senate, gay marriage passing in Maine and Maryland, and marijuana legalized in Colorado and Washington State, the country apparently did not heed Paul Ryan’s warning that Obama was “putting America on a dangerous path that compromises Judeo-Christian Western civilization values”. The author of “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God”, Tanya Luhrmann joins us. She is both a psychologist and an anthropologist, and we discuss how much yesterday’s election was a watershed with the apparent waning of the religious right and the possible emergence of a secular, liberal majority in America.
	MUSIC: Tom Petty – Won't Back Down; Gnarls Barkley – Crazy; The Shins – Fighting in a Sack; Plastic Ono Band – God